


蒸し暑い (Humid)

by thousandmonkeys



Series: Touken Week 2k14 [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, toukenweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2569910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thousandmonkeys/pseuds/thousandmonkeys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gen. Childhood memories are the most confusing of things, really. [[ Day 2 of Touken Week.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	蒸し暑い (Humid)

\---

_Let’s step back from the tragedy of recent years, shall we? It’s summer, after all, and if the fireflies are out in full force, then it’s the perfect time for a spark of light._

\---

Not quite five years old, young, and altogether irresponsible, five-year-old Touka slipped quietly off into the sparse copse of pine trees surrounding the inn, ignoring the infant Ayato’s insistent cries for somebody to play with him. Her dad would get it, anyways.

Or maybe mum would. 

Hands reaching up over another other hand, Touka climbed up a pine tree, flicking off the beetles already occupying the make-shift seat. She laughed as the bugs fell off in a shower of little black spots, and shook the branches more. 

To be honest, the girl wished they would go to the countryside more often; moss and tree bark didn’t smell half-as-bad as the convenience store down the street, or the kindergarten’s cafeteria.

Eurgh.

She was sure that humans had food safety regulations, even if they managed to choke down some of the most disgusting things... 

Something rustled underneath her perch, and she peered over to look; a well-kept mop of dark hair was all she saw; a boy probably.

A human, definitely. 

Her dad had said not to draw any attention to herself, but then again, that rule only applied to adults, right? The boy looked  _weak_  anyways; Ayato could probably take him down with a headbutt, and he wasn’t even out of diapers yet!

Lips curving up in a bow of mischief, Touka rummaged around a nearby branch for the squishiest, softest, and most squirmiest worm she could find; hands alighting on her target, she readied her aim.

“Oi, look up,” she hissed, tongue poking out in concentration.

He did.

She dropped the worm, and hoped that it would land square on his face.

It did.

Immediately the boy burst into a splutter of indignant noises, and Touka’s peals of laughter sounded through the forest, scaring away a nearby magpie, who turned to glance at her in disguist. She shooed it away.

Whatever the magpie had felt, it wasn’t anywhere  _close_ to how the boy was staring at her, confusion clear in his clear, clear eyes. “Why’d you  _do_ that?” the boy choked, rubbing vigorously at the spot where the worm had landed.

She could’ve felt a little bad for it, but the irrepressible lack of conscience characteristic of kids on the outskirts of society didn’t really lend itself to empathy.

But the chances were lottery-worthy.

Instead, Touka continued laughing, and patted the branch she was perched on. “Come up!”

The boy below her made no move, warily eyeing the bark where her hands rested, searching for the slightest hint of another insect shower. “You’re going to throw another worm on me, I  _know_  it,” he mumbled, almost too low for her to hear. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

Touka reached up a hand to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes, considering the boy’s words: the idea was tempting—but boring, too, since the young ghoul rarely got to meet humans, let alone one her age. 

“I won’t,” she finally said, and jumped down from her perch.

His eyes widened and made a feeble attempt to catch her, but the girl landed as sure-footed as ever, sending leaves spiraling up. As she looked up, she noticed one had gotten caught in the rat’s nest of his hair; it looked rather like a hat. “You’ve got a leaf stuck in your head,” she said.

“I—” the boy said, trying to think of a witty response, but sagged, resignedly plucking the stray foliage with fingers defter than she’d expected. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around before,” he said, dismissing the strangeness of their meeting with a sudden change of tone—cheerful, open, almost—that Touka was caught wholly off guard by. 

She blinked. “Are you from around here then?” Maybe that’s why he seemed so out of it; probably not used to tourists intruding on his space. The boy didn’t seem particularly like the ones she sometimes saw in pre-school; much less snot, for one. 

“Nah, I’m from Tokyo,” he said, frowning. “I was going to ask you the same. I’ve never met a boy like you before.”

She nodded absently, before realizing what the boy had said. “I’m not a guy!” she huffed, tugging at the corner of her blouse; “Look! It’s yellow,  _yellow_. Are you blind?”

“Oh.” The boy shrugged, trying to dismiss the slip. “Uhm, sorry,” he offered feebly, floundering for an answer. “That just means you’re special, right?”

All he got for his efforts was a deadpan stare.

For a moment, nothing sounded between the two of them, and the chirping of cicadas filled the silence eagerly, almost deafening Touka’s overly-sensitive ears. She winced; right, that was why she’d wanted to climb the trees in the first place.

 “I just remembered something!”

The human’s voice broke the awkward stillness, and he took hold of her hand, leading her deeper into the forest; his palm was surprisingly rough, like probably from doing dishes.

She pulled back instinctively, but something stopped her from breaking his grip; impulsively, she followed.

The trees cleared eventually, opening up onto a hilly expanse; maybe it was the orange clouds of the dawn, but light seemed to be rising up from the water’s rippling surface; in truth, it was probably shallow, but to the five-year-old and her slightly-older companion, it seemed deeper than even the ocean.  Leaning forward, she watched bemusedly as one flew by, landing on jacket; it’s glow seemed too delicate to exist even in the strange half-light of morning. “Are these fireflies?” she whispered, a half-gasp.

Laughing sheepishly, the dark-haired boy shrugged, sitting down in a tangle of limbs next to her. “I thought since you seem like bugs, you would get a kick out of this.” He shooed the firefly off her coat, and Touka watched the insect bob off to rejoin its friends hovering over the only cold source in the whole forest.

“Is this a good enough apology?”

\---

The inn, fallen into disrepair, was quite possibly the gloomiest building Touka had ever seen in her life; the infestation of rats was the least of the vermin, and the bath seemed to have been coated in algae which sprung out of some western horror movie. Somewhere off the highway, it  _could_ be called the perfect hideaway, if only because nobody wanted to think of the place.

As long as you didn’t mind the possibility of dying from some horrifying bacteria, she amended, as she sidestepped a suspiciously purple patch on the ground. 

Not for the first time, she glanced in askance at the older man who’d brought her here, exasperation clear in her voice. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have just stayed in Tokyo. Or Narita. Or hell, the top of Mount Fuji sounds good!” There wasn’t a  _fan_ , as the sweat dripping off the ends of her hair reminded her, tiny droplets rolling off errant stands with each step.  

“Here, the pliers,” she said, handing the tool up to her companion. 

Yomo, perched precariously on a ladder Touka was convinced was a relic of the Meiji era, shrugged, reaching down to take the pliers. “I haven’t been here since your mum was still alive,” he murmured, more to avoid accidentally eating a spiderweb than out of desire to keep his voice low. “She sure loved the bugs around here.”

“Mum?”

 “Yeah.” 

At that, Touka smiled, shaking off the earlier sense of nostalgia: that must’ve been it; people didn’t just go and meet other people as kids, did they? Sounded like something out of Yoriko’s romance novels.

Anyways! If anything, Kaneki would be the girl, the selfish boy—

 Shaking her head, she broke herself out of her reverie. “Ah. That’s why it’s familiar.”

“Mm,” her uncle said, and lasped into silence, once again disappearing into the tangle of wiring that was the attic.

 

**Author's Note:**

> We were learning about the weather in Japanese class, and I thought it meant “Bugs and Hot” but it meant “Humid” and I was like. Ok. Bugs. Yes who does that remind me off... 
> 
> Oh also uhm. No romance here, just little kids playing around in the forest.


End file.
